here with arms open for you
by milk ghost
Summary: Wherein Blue Sargent learns several things. The most prominent of which being that Noah Czerny is a tattletale./ Or, the boys belatedly celebrate Blue's birthday.—gansey/blue


**notes: **my otp can't even kiss if they want to, screw it all. this is the most painful couple in the history of ever. also 8tracks is distracting and magical.  
**dedication: **to liz, who hasn't even touched this train derailment and yet listens to me cry about it. a lot. **  
disclaimer: **if i owned the raven cycle, do you think that would change anything because i'm pretty sure it wouldn't.  
**more notes: **who else needs the murder squash song in their lives? also, this series will be the end of me.

**title: **here with arms open for you/all caught up in love, shaking hands and fickle-hearted

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{_don't you know people write songs about girls like you?/  
__don't say goodbye, don't you release me_}

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(_x_)

When Blue walks into Monmouth Manufacturing on a drizzly Tuesday afternoon, she is woefully unaware and unprepared for anything that might happen.

To be fair, she's prepared herself for almost anything at this point—meaning: dead boys, missing mothers, centuries-old illegitimate and insane daughters of sleeping kings, the Pig's air conditioning going out at the worst times, dream dragons setting things ablaze, cursed caves, Ronan Lynch, etc. etc.—but this is different. The difference mainly being that, when she first steps foot into the apartment, nothing happens.

She closes the door quietly behind her and peers around the empty second floor. It looks the same as always—Gansey's miniature model of Henrietta is still in the midst of repair, his books and notes spread about the room, a shirt with a faded decal of an Irish band tossed carelessly over a chair, a box of tapes is sitting on the table next to labels and a jet black Sharpie. It is unorganized and uncomplicated, with an air of homeliness about it that is similar to the home of 300 Fox Way. It's what the magazines call 'messy chic', lived in but still stylish.

It almost makes her smile to think of what they'd have to say about the bathroom/kitchen/laundry. Definitely not anything good. Functional, maybe, but certainly not ideal.

What she loves most about Monmouth aside from the uncomplicatedness is this: it is private, with a certain intimateness about it that her home at 300 Fox Way does not have. It's mainly just Gansey and Ronan here, sometimes Noah—but dead boys usually do not disturb much—and it shows. You can hear the rain pattering down on the roof overhead, or watch it from the windows, and it's calming. All in all, it has a certain charm to it that puts a visitor under a spell. Gansey's charm.

Blue decidedly does not think of this as she drops her backpack onto the floor near the door. Today she wore a soft pink sweater with gray patches and old lace sewn around the edges and sleeves (something that Persephone made her, and she does not think about that either), and it is damp from the rain. She doesn't mind riding her bike to school and back—even in a skirt, like today—in fact, she enjoys it. But Henrietta has fickle weather snaps, and sometimes thunderstorms or rain just came on like a snap of the fingers.

Her boots scuffle across the floorboards as she makes her way around the room. The Pig and the BMW are both outside, which by all account should mean that at least Gansey and Ronan are home, but it appears they aren't. Unless they went somewhere with Adam in his Hondayota, and although Blue has learned to be more open-minded lately, she highly doubts that is the case.

Monmouth is quiet, and while it usually is already, this is a different sort of hush. It's an unoccupied kind of quiet, something that Blue is not used to. Someone is almost always here when she arrives, but Gansey's bed is neatly unmade, Ronan's door is off-limits as per usual, and the only noise aside from the violent sound of nothing, is the downpour outside. It makes her shiver.

"Noah?" she calls out mildly to the apartment's third occupant, although there's no telling where he could be, if he even is at all. "I brought the cards today if you want to play."

Recently, they've taken up playing Blackjack, just for the fun of it. Noah is astoundingly better at it than pool, and there is no sound of balls cracking against each other to distract Gansey from his studying and Ronan from his not-studying. Their chips were mostly composed of odds and ends such as glass marbles, pretty stones that Ronan may or may not have dreamed up for them, favors, and other strange things that casinos would roll their eyes at. Occasionally change was thrown into the mix, but as Noah was a ghost, he couldn't do anything with it.

Blue nearly falls flat on her face when she feels something being pressed against her forehead. "What," she whirls around so fast that the cards slip from her hand and scatter across the floor and the toe of her boot catches on a loose floorboard. Her arms flail wildly for a half a minute before she regains her balance and the world of gravity is right once again.

Her fingers find her hair, and subsequently the crown sitting nicely atop her head. It's a tangle of daises, forget-me-nots, and some other species of flowers that she's never seen before. It has an otherworldly air about it, or it does as she looks at her reflection in the droplet-streaked window panes, anyway.

"There," comes the satisfactory voice from behind her. It has a certain disembodied underlay to it that could only belong to one person. Or former person. "You look like a faerie queen now."

Blue squints at Noah, who is mostly visible today and therefore must be borrowing some of her energy. "Funny," she says dryly. His smudgy cheek seems extra prominent today, and she doesn't like the way her chest tightens at that. "Maybe I am one."

"Explains why you're so short then," Ronan comments, and for the first time she notices that he is leaning against the doorframe to his room, though he wasn't there before.

She makes a horrendous face at him, which he returns more fiercely, but in good humor. Noah laughs, and it's a breathy sound that fills the room and makes the corners of her mouth turn up.

Gansey appears then, from where she does not know, and gives Ronan a _look _which the recipient pretends not to notice. Then, he turns his gaze upon her, and she does not like how her heartbeat skips a few paces. "Jane," he says, and there is a note is his golden accented, honey-dripped voice that alerts her to the fact that this is his _lecturing voice. _She holds her breath, even though she's not aware of anything she has done wrong. "Why didn't you tell us that it was your birthday?"

She stares. He blinks back at her. Chainsaw makes a peculiar scratching sound from her perch on Ronan's shoulder.

"Noah," Blue concludes, catching a glimpse of him in her peripheral vision. He wiggles his finger at her in a wave, looking just enough reprimanded.

There is a list of numerable reasons why she never mentioned her birthdate's arrival or passing, all of which end with "it just wasn't that important." Example one: Maura disappearing and staying disappeared, example two: Colin Greenmantle and his wife, example three: finding Glendower's still-awake daughter, and so on.

(She does not pay attention to the memory of Persephone and the perfectly baked brownies dusted with powdered sugar, or the pretend kiss with Gansey, or Jesse Dittley.)

Also, she thought it vastly unfair that she turned older, but Noah didn't get that chance. So yes, there are several good reasons why she didn't mention her birthday, but since apparently one-fifth of their group is a tattletale, now the other three-fifths know about it.

"Um, it just didn't come up?"

It was true, they had never asked about her birthday that she could recall, so it wasn't like she was lying. She didn't know their birthdays either—aside from Noah, but the only reason she was aware of it was because of his license. The one she and Gansey had found in the woods the day that they'd—

Gansey has already been talking, apparently, but she's missed most of his message to her, and only snaps back to attention because of the use of her real name. "—should've told us, Blue. We had a whole summer ahead of us."

She blinks at him, once, twice, then—"Okay. Gotcha. Next time I will inform you of any pertinent details about my life that you may not know."

He sighs, Ronan snickers, Adam smiles, and Noah visibly brightens. "So you do know that we're still going for gelato, right?"

(_x_)

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For reasons unbeknownst to the rest of their group, Noah is absolutely enamored with the gelato parlor in town. Ignoring the obvious fact that he cannot _eat_ anything, he still likes to go whenever the opportunity presents itself. Just returned from an unfortunate caving expedition? Solution: gelato. The Pig's carburetor suddenly quit? Why not some gelato? Ronan disappearing for hours on end only to show up with a black eye and covered in mystery fluid? Why not talk about it over gelato?

Celebrating Blue Sargent's belated birthday that nobody knew had passed? Gelato.

Also, it allowed pets, which was as close to a label as you could put on Chainsaw. Unless it happened to be _dream thing, possibly Ronan's heart_, _wondrous miracle, _etc. But Blue doubted that the owner cared about those titles, and he didn't need to know.

So here they were, seated all around a table with dishes upon dishes of multicolored Italian ice cream melting and being shared. They might have ordered everything on the menu, she can't remember, though she does have a vague memory of Gansey saying "we'll take one of everything you've got" after Noah kept pointing at flavors and enthusiastically ordering them even though the owner couldn't see or hear him.

Adam is telling a story of something that happened at work today, and Ronan is sitting closer to him than usual. Blue takes note of this, even if no one else does. Noah is leaning over the table, thoroughly inspecting a glass dish of sea salt caramel that's fusing with the strawberry cheesecake next to it. Gansey is seated next to her, elbow propped on the tabletop and chine resting against a closed fist.

On the edge of the seat is a bag full of gifts—a menagerie of colorful ribbons from Adam, daisy chains from Noah, yogurt without fruit from Gansey, and a shiny blue switchblade from Ronan. Upon pulling out the fourth gift, she turned her questioning gaze to her fiercest friend. The conversation that ensued went something like this:

Blue: What is this.

Ronan: A present, obviously.

Blue: Obviously. It's blue.

Ronan: Congratulations on the keen sense of observation. Also, it's a metaphor.

Blue: And illegal.

Ronan: Now you have a matching set.

Blue: Thank you. I think.

The flower crown, a product of both Noah and Ronan's work (the former's weaving and the latter's dream flora) is still resting atop her hair, and there is a smiling twisting her lips upward.

All in all, they were not the sort of gifts that one would think Raven Boys would give, but she loves them all the more for it. They know her enough to realize that she wouldn't accept anything with grandeur and that's okay. Because she is Blue Sargent, rich in love, rich in common sense, rich in friends. She makes her own magic and leaves a little grandeur wherever she goes.

She dips her spoon into one of the many bowls spread around the table as Ronan launches into a memory of some expedition he and Gansey had gone on before she'd been around. Presumably it's going to end with the Pig breaking down and leaving them stranded in the Middle of Nowhere, because that is how it normally does.

It's hard to imagine a time before she was on this quest with them. She knows it exists, because there are memories of life prior to that fateful night at Nino's, but it doesn't seem real. A part of her feels like she never really belonged in this world until Richard Gansey the III approached her, trying to convince her to give his friend a chance. Before Glendower, before Mr. Gray, before falling in love.

Gansey opens his hand to her under the table, palm inviting and hopeful. His expression doesn't change as he listens to the story Ronan is telling; maybe because Ronan does not tell stories often. Blue traces the pattern of the ley lines into his palm before matching her hand with his. Her hands are pathetically small compared to his own, but he intertwines their fingers nonetheless. Above the table, there is no indication that anything has happened—_this is not allowed what are you doing he's going to die stop it stop it stop_—but all the proof is inside her chest. It's her pulse beating a hundred miles a minute, it's the way he strokes her thumb with his own.

She wants to kiss him so badly. There's an aching longing inside of her that she can't satisfy. It craves knowledge—_does he taste like mint leaves and honey too?_—wants him. She smiles at something Adam says, but it's wobbly because of her internal battle. _Do not do not do not, you will _not.

He squeezes her hand.

Blue realizes that he wants to kiss her, too.

They don't.

(_x_)

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But later, when he drops her off at home because it is dark and raining literal buckets, when it is just them because Adam has an early shift and is in desperate need of sleep, and Ronan and Noah are presumably up to their usual mischief slash terror, they sit in the Pig a few minutes longer than they should.

They should exchange 'goodnights' and 'see you tomorrows', they should part ways like friends. They should not lean over the gearshift, Gansey should not tuck a few stray locks of Blue's dark hair behind her ear, Blue should not press her palm and outstretched fingers against his neck, his breath should not catch at this action, he should not gently brush his thumb against her bottom lip. Their noses should not brush against each other, their cheeks should not press together, their breath should not be ragged and catching, their lips should touch.

They don't.

_fin._

**end notes:** adam was just at monmouth the whole time idk. precious children, the lot of them.


End file.
